Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste

Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste A    M  W The Australian National University The collapse of the market economy and most employment opportunities that accompanied the withdrawal of Indonesia from East Timor in 1999 prompted the re-emergence of customary exchange practices that were heavily attenuated during Indonesian rule (1975-99). For many Fataluku-speaking Timorese communities, the strict internal security regime that accompanied military occupation curtailed opportunities for enacting vital exchanges that inform and reproduce social relations between kin, affines, and ancestors. As they rebuild their lives in a now independent Timor-Leste, a renewed attention to exchange and the reciprocal flow of gifts, goods, labour, and blessings is again engaging Fataluku households. In this context, ideas of obligation and mutual exchange become constitutive elements of socio-economic and religious activity that is fundamental to the resilience of the community. The article considers the role of gift economies as expressions of human security from below and as strategies designed to mitigate economic uncertainty through ritual exchange and religious action. This article forms part of a broader ethnographic study of post-independence sociality in East Timor. For a decade now I have followed the process of rebuilding in East Timor since the destructive withdrawal of the Indonesian government in late  and the subsequent intervention of a UN-backed multinational peace-keeping force (Interfet). In the wake of an orchestrated campaign of violent intimidation by army-backed militias, the destruction of property, and the temporary mass displacement of local populations, East Timor was left a smoking ruin with no effective institutions of formal governance or trade. These events affected different areas of East Timor differently, and I have sought to follow some of the impacts of post-conflict recovery through a range of issues and from various perspectives (e.g. McWilliam ; ; a; b), but my main ethnographic focus has been on one particular area of East Timor, the most easterly district of the island known as Lautem. This region is home to indigenous Fataluku-languagespeakers, who number around , people (according to the  Census), and who as a community have been gradually rebuilding their lives and livelihoods in the years since liberation. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  746 Andrew McWilliam In reflecting on the character of these restorative social practices, I argue that Fataluku-language communities are very much engaged in strategies of social renewal that are directed to overcoming the deprivations of long-term Indonesian militarized occupation. As part of this argument, I focus on what is really a key component of that process of recovery, namely the rebuilding of exchange relationships between persons, households, and residential communities of intimate association. In the multiple relationships of material exchange, we can recognize here an active engagement in risk mitigation, or at least a coming to terms with the post-conflict, postcolonial conditions of contemporary social life. These are conditions analogous to what Erikson has defined as ‘collective trauma’, where a ‘blow to the basic tissues of social life damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality’ (: ). My argument has two strands. Firstly, I seek to understand what I see as a remarkable resurgence of exchange relationships from the ruins of . These relationships are expressed through practices of gift-giving and delayed reciprocity that still characterize so much of the interactive social domain in Fataluku communities. And I pursue the idea, one well attested to in the anthropological literature, that these exchange relationships can be understood as calculative forms of mutual appropriation or expectations of engagement rather than expressions of shared altruism under straitened circumstances (Appadurai ; Bourdieu  []). The result of the sum of these sequential exchanges in any particular social context is the creation of webs of mutually appropriated debt obligations (and claims) between exchange partners: a weaving together of multiple strands of obligation and entitlement in the reproduction of the social fabric (see Barth ).1 The enactment and negotiated conduct of these exchanges, which are frequently and distinctively ceremonial in character, provide a context for people’s strategic social relations, and by inference their debt relationships, to be made both visible and publicly acknowledged. Indebtedness and the cultural pattern of asymmetric gift exchange – another characteristic of Fataluku gift-giving through which many of these obligations are enacted – are perpetuated and sustained in part through sanctions for non-compliance. Sanctions here extend to forms of social distancing or more diffuse spiritual consequences, including illness, economic misfortune, and infertility. The driving rationale behind such notions is that if you don’t fulfil your debt obligations, you open yourself and household to forms of illness or other kinds of calamity. These ideas and practices extend into the spiritual realm, where the postoccupation period has signalled an expansion of ancestral sacrificial practices expressed through forms of symbolic exchange and the offering of gifts in return for ancestral blessing and protection. My second general analytical point is that this revitalized exchange economy is a cultural response to the withdrawal of repressive militarized governance along with the sudden and dramatic decline of the formal market economy and the various (Indonesian) government subsidies and social services that supported it. In the early postindependence environment,2 social conditions favoured the reproduction of gift exchange systems rather than market relations and strategic investment in social rather than financial capital. In this way, it seems to me, Fataluku communities express their cultural resilience and the vital capacity to reconstitute social lives and cultural institutions following periods of marked social adversity. Cultural resilience in this sense speaks to the enduring importance of exchange as a medium of social and spiritual Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 747 engagement and the material expressions of social alliances that enable groups and communities to prosper.3 The shift among Fataluku communities to intensified exchange relations which dominate transactions between households appears to be a reversal of the previous trajectory of economic development and the market-led modernism that emerged strongly during Indonesian rule. In that period, major financial investments by the Indonesian government in public infrastructure, social services, education, and employment opportunities formed part of a heavy-handed ‘hearts and minds’ strategy to dissuade Timorese from their recalcitrance and resistance to Indonesian sovereignty. While politically the strategy had mixed results and ultimately failed to secure allegiance, it contributed significantly to the development of a vibrant local cash economy, to nascent consumerism, and to an orientation to more market-based relationships. These developments did not negate the requirement for social exchange and the reproduction of alliance relationships, fundamental as they are to Fataluku social identities, but they directed people’s interest and efforts to a wider set of economic options and commercial relations than had been the case under the prevailing period of Portuguese colonial rule prior to . In the post-occupation period, most of those possibilities evaporated, and as general economic conditions in East Timor languished, particularly in areas on the margins of capitalism like Lautem, so an intensified and more openly public enactment of reciprocal gift exchange in the social and religious domain emerged as a kind of cathartic return to sociality. In the process, this cultural turn has galvanized opportunities for the reassertion of ascribed social hierarchies and the public expressions of personal and group prestige through the elaboration of ceremonial gift-giving. In highlighting this shift in emphasis from market to exchange relationships, and from a context of producing commodities to exchanging ‘gifts’, there is an apparent reversal of economic trajectories, one that highlights linkages between the market economy and communal exchange. Here I would draw upon the work of anthropologists such as Gregory (), on the relationship between commodities and gifts, and Gudeman (; ), especially the latter’s conceptual dialectic between community and market economies. Gudeman argues that the market realm revolves around abstract and short-term material relationships undertaken principally to secure economic goods, whereas in the community realm, material goods and services are exchanged through relationships kept for their own sake (: ). As a dialectical tension, these modalities of economy are heuristically distinct but in practice mutually constituted as part of what Gibson-Graham () has described as contrasting expressions of the diverse economy that extends in a continuum of market and non-market, capitalist and non-capitalist. In other words, the nature of the interactive economic realm means that markets and gift exchanges inevitably inform one another, entangled as they are in a range of strategic individual and collective interests and often long histories of engagement (Hoskins ; Schrauwers ; Valeri ). Such is the case in Lautem with its histories of inter-island commerce, sandalwood and slave trading,4 as well as the intrusive tax and development regimes promoted by the Portuguese colonial government from the late nineteenth century. Trading and commoditization have long featured in Fataluku moral economies, but the collapse of the market in , and with it many of the cash-based forms of transaction combined with the closure of the borders to neighbouring island trade, fostered a reorientation of energies towards a heightened, socially inflected exchange economy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  748 Andrew McWilliam In the present context of economic constraint and subdued market conditions, the community economies of exchange that have been so strongly evident in postoccupation Lautem continue to provide security and assurance for cash-poor communities. But as economic conditions have improved and government budget injections revive commodity trading, it is also apparent that the cultural focus on the gift economy, particularly in its more intensified forms, is diminishing and weakening in the face of growing cash incomes, employment benefits, and consumer aspirations. Such processes are already becoming evident through activities like small-scale trading in local markets for basic commodities, increasing job opportunities through government or technical assistance projects, house improvements, and the availability of consumer goods that are gradually expanding in scope and variety. A complementary shift in emphasis may also emerge through a reduced intensity of religious and sacrificial practices as improvements in economic well-being cushion household livelihoods and their sense of control over the vicissitudes of everyday life. Nevertheless, the example of Fataluku collective responses to deprivation and reduced circumstances is a salutary one in terms of appreciating social capacities for recovery in post-conflict situations. The study therefore speaks both to an ethnographically informed understanding of cultural resilience and human security as well as to the dynamic interrelationship between the contrasting (albeit interactive) realms of community and market economies, social and spiritual realms. In the remainder of the article, I seek to make these connections and introductory reflections more explicit via examples from Fataluku ethnography and experience. Post-occupation social life and elaboration of the exchange economy A key factor in the renewed attention to Fataluku gift exchange economies was the extraordinary political and economic context that prevailed in the region of Lautem under Indonesian occupation. For twenty-four years from  to , Fataluku communities were embroiled in a long-term armed insurgency against occupying Indonesian military forces, particularly after  with the rise of a sustained civilian clandestine operation that supported the Falintil resistance fighters in the forests (see McWilliam ).5 The consequence of Fataluku reluctance to become dutiful Indonesian citizens meant that they were subject to intense levels of military surveillance and control.6 This included many years of restriction on movement and congregation, residential displacement and resettlement, the suppression of indigenous religious practice, and reprisals against suspected Fretilin7 sympathizers. As a consequence, much of the conventional social and ceremonial life of Fataluku society shrank from public gaze, becoming attenuated, suppressed, and fragmented. Travel was restricted, as were larger social gatherings. Opportunities to visit sites of clan veneration and ritual significance, for example, were substantially curtailed, and much of ritual social life in a sense folded in on itself, limiting festivities to those with immediate neighbours and proximate family networks. Gift exchange and the sentiments they express towards kin and affines have always been important features of Fataluku social relations, but the limits imposed by the military occupation worked to constrain their public expression and disrupt opportunities for their enactment beyond the immediate settled and surveilled space. These constraints also formed part of an ideological imposition of the Indonesian state; one that fostered certain modernist aspirations Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 749 among its new citizens, while disapproving of the unproductive, even subversive, practices of tradition and social exchange. The remarkable withdrawal of Indonesian forces in late , along with the Indonesian military, traders, bureaucrats, and social infrastructure that supported the formal market economy, came suddenly. With no markets to sell into and little cash available, surplus production flowed into social and symbolic capital rather than consumer items or cash investments, and much household effort was directed towards recovering a sociality fragmented by war.8 At this time, one of the urgent and highly valued activities of the immediate postoccupation period was the effort, time, and resources invested by Timorese households in recovering and reburying the bones of deceased relatives who went missing or were murdered during the resistance struggle, their bodies abandoned in the forest or in unmarked graves. The desire to locate and lay to rest the interred remains of lost relatives, which has been a widespread phenomenon across Timor-Leste, was driven by an undoubtedly complex range of individual motivations, of obligation, compassion, survivor guilt, and duty, among others. But for Fataluku at least, one of the main reasons for seeking out the abandoned dead was a reported common experience of disturbed dreams (ufarana) where the deceased are interpreted as demanding attention and due respect from their kin (McWilliam a: ). In cases of ‘bad death’ such as these, Fataluku speak of the deceased in terms of their need to be ‘healed’ (amukumu), in the sense of releasing their ‘spirit’ (huma’ara) from the pain and suffering they experienced. When the bones of the dead are not located, symbolic secondary burials with bundled cloth and simple coffins have been conducted along with the conventional array of accompanying mortuary rituals and gifts.9 Group ritual performance in this context, whatever else it does, provides a comforting sense of well-being, control, and perhaps social justice in circumstances where there was (and remains) little recourse to government services or other forms of state-based social welfare. As expressions of neo-Durkheimian solidarity, Fataluku gift-giving, especially in the production and sharing of food and labour, is a key idiom of social life, and the principal medium for reproducing social relations. For the purposes of presentation, however, I would divide the inherently complex patterns of exchange into two broad and largely heuristic categories, namely: gifts exchanged between members of interactive social groups – the living; and gift obligations directed towards house ancestors and the spiritual domain. While conceptually distinct, every occasion of ceremonial significance is at the same time an opportunity and obligation for spiritual invocation and sacrificial giftgiving. As interrelated fields of action, both categories of exchange have seen significant elaboration in the years since Indonesian occupation, particularly with the lifting of controls on movement and congregation. Neglected obligations towards both the living and the dead have demanded substantial time, effort, and economic resources from Fataluku households to restore equilibrium and fulfil the expectations of agnates, allies, and ancestors. Thus, everyday social life in Fataluku settlements is replete with exchanges and multiple ceremonial activities, including preparatory discussions (horo horo), organization of food, gifts of animals and value objects, as well as the mobilization of relations for labour assistance. In the relative absence of opportunities for paid employment and commercial trade, social exchange assumes a larger importance, and, at any particular time, people will be engaged in a whole range of ritual activities covering matters as diverse as marriage negotiations, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  750 Andrew McWilliam baptisms, house construction, food harvesting rituals, funerals, and other forms of religious observance; all events that work to reconstitute the social and all requiring tangible contributions from participating households where old obligations are repaid and new ones incurred. Fataluku exchange economies and the social realm A key institution in Fataluku society is the paternal clan, or more specifically the geographically dispersed origin group known as a ratu. Membership of any particular ratu, and there are dozens of named Fataluku clans resident in Lautem, is reckoned through one’s father and father’s fathers. Thus the veneration of origin male ancestors (calu ho papu)10 holds important cultural associations and provides a focus for sacrificial rituals at specific sites of ancestral invocation. It also forms the basis for inherited land entitlements for its agnatic membership and the cultural geography of personal social identity and belonging. Fataluku origin groups are, by definition, exogamous, with daughters of the household expected to marry into their husband’s clan and affiliate there with their children. Marriage and the reproduction of marriage alliances form a central component of Fataluku exchange relationships, one that guides the subsequent conduct of social interaction within and between related households over their life-cycles. Culturally, marriage is thought of as a transfer of women and the reproductive fertility they bring from their natal house to that of their husbands. Technically, Fataluku society follows a form of asymmetric prescriptive alliance in both kin terminology and marriage practice (see Hicks ; Needham ). In other words, the flow of people between the constituent households of exogamous ratu groups can only move in one direction, namely matrilaterally (MBD-FZS), from wife-giving houses (ara ho pata) to wifetaking houses (tupurmoko). In so doing, they reproduce the direction of earlier patterns of marriage exchange and follow what Fataluku term ‘the wide path and trail’ (ia rata, vaku rata). In this cultural system, direct exchange or the alternative patrilateral option (FZD-MBS) is proscribed and transgressive (tei). Marriage unions and associated affinal relationships between marrying groups in Lautem are therefore profoundly asymmetric; an asymmetry that is also expressed in the nature of the exchanges that pass between alliance partners and their respective relational allies.11 Marriages within existing alliance relationships are favoured for the benefits they bestow: the existing familiarity, often close associations in terms of residence and intimacy, status equivalence, and the expectation that the marriage will be favoured with children and vigorous health. But new marriage connections with outsiders are also common and reflect the impact of the higher mobility of young people for education to regional towns and the extensive resettlements that occurred under Indonesian rule. Either way, marriage exchange involves an extended process of negotiated agreements which are marked and celebrated through a series of public exchanges of gifts and commensality. To illustrate something of the form and substance of these exchanges, I present a processual model of a Fataluku marriage and the implications that follow for future obligations and entitlements between the different participants in the union. The conventions and protocols are complex but they illustrate a simple point, namely that in the density and entanglement of multiple material exchanges, Fataluku work to make and remake a common sociality. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 751 Figure  shows a basic representation of the culturally preferred form of marriage in which a woman marries the son of her father’s sister (tamu). In kin terminology they are prescribed marriage partners (hia tupuru – hia nami: the path of the women – the path of the man). In the sequence of celebratory rituals that accompany the process of marriage, gifts and services are exchanged between marrying houses, engaging a network of interrelated households in asymmetric reciprocal payments. Marriage gifts flow in both directions as reciprocal but contrasting values. From one direction flow gifts from the household of the groom (namimiri: new man), who assembles an agreed set of symbolically masculine goods of buffalo, horses, animals for feasting (leura), swords, and, often these days, cash in the form of US dollars. From the family of the bride (tupurmiri: new woman), the source of life (anticipating the babies she will bear), flow symbolically female gifts, such as pigs, coral bead necklaces (inu), gold earrings (karasu), high-value woven cloths (lauhana),12 and sometimes gifts of land. Fataluku have a reputation for asking high levels of bridewealth (barlake in the lingua franca, Tetun), conventionally expressed as seventy-seven buffaloes for higher-status marriages.13 In practice and with the drastic reduction in buffalo herds during the late phase of Indonesian occupation, families often accept a much lower sum, payable over the life of the marriage or longer. The practice of substituting currency (US dollars) for buffaloes ($ a head equivalent) is undertaken these days ostensibly for convenience, but its symbolism resonates with Valeri’s () observations on the commodity implications of bridewealth transactions that are negated through the counter-prestations of the bridal group, thereby converting them to gifts. In the sequence of ceremonies that culminates in a final commensal gathering, wife-takers feed their hosts with the buffalo meat (leura) that they bring for slaughter. In return, wife-givers prepare rice and pork (oré) to feed their guests. The contrasting gifts of leura and oré signify the enduring reciprocal relationship between affines which Ratu B Ratu A Pigs and cloth, coral beads and oré (pork) Buffalo, horses, cattle, swords, gold, cash, and leura (meat) Figure 1. The path of marriage. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  752 Andrew McWilliam is reproduced in subsequent ritual gatherings to mark future life-cycle events of the household. Marriage gifts and the complex logistical requirements to stage ceremonial gatherings, however, are not simply confined to the immediate marrying households. On the contrary, marriage engages networks of agnatic and affinally related households who align themselves with either the groom or the bride. Fataluku marriage establishes at that juncture three interactive categories of participant, all of whom are expected to contribute a variable range of material support in their respective roles (see Fig. ). Detailed reckoning is made of debts and obligations incurred in these contexts, a feature marked traditionally with the jawbones of slaughtered livestock secured in house rafters or as ceremonial grave markers, but these days more typically recorded in hand-written notes for future reference. The notations provide a record for reciprocal payments in the future and a measure of the status of gift exchanges between related households. The gift of a large buffalo, for instance, requires a commensurate return gift of a high-value marriage cloth. No affinal payment goes unreciprocated, so heavy requests for bridewealth are met with equally elaborate reciprocity over time, and in this way marriage constitutes an arena for expressions of honour and competitive prestige. The three category groups for any particular marriage exchange are, firstly, the household of the bride and their immediate agnates, who are collectively referred to as the ara ho pata (base and post, trunk and stem). They represent the progenitors, life-givers to the house of the groom and the source of the reproduction of the wife-taking group. In ritual language they are referred to as the Uncles and Brothersin-law (paien ho vaien) and they represent the senior affinal group for the household created by the marriage. Implicit in marriage is the cultural expectation that the son of Ara ho Pata Uncles and in-laws Tupurmoko Brothers and fathers Sisters and children [Ara ho pata (1) Ratu A (2) Ratu B Paien ho Vaien Kaka ho Pali Lan ho Tava Tupurmoko] (3) Married daughters of Ratu B Leren ho Moco Bride (tupurrmiri) Groom (namimiri) Bridewealth Gifts of pigs and cloth Gifts of money, livestock, and labour Ratu B repays assistance from the ‘sister’s and children’ with return gifts of cloth and food distributions Figure 2. Marriage exchange networks. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 753 the new union will marry in turn the daughter of his mother’s brother, who is simultaneously paienu (uncle) and ara ho pata (the source of life).14 A second obligatory group represent the groom’s household and kin (namimiri: new man), They are referred to in ritual language by the phrase ‘brothers and fathers’ (kaka ho pali). The agnatic relatives of the groom work together to negotiate the terms of the marriage and assemble the agreed bridewealth, including the various contributions to feasting and labour logistics that accompany all social events of this nature. Gifts extended between agnates (classificatory siblings and fathers) are frequently symmetrical in form where like is repaid with like. Gifts between affines are culturally marked and invariably contrasting in form. In addition to the immediate consanguineal kin, another group of providers is included as the lan(u) ho tava (friends and acquaintances), which I gloss as classificatory siblings. These are members of groups who acknowledge common ancestral origins and a shared kinship as ‘brothers and fathers’ to Ratu B. They, too, may provide contributions to the assembled wedding gifts with the expectation of an equivalent return in due course. They sit in solidarity on the side of wife-takers. A third group who are called upon the assist in the marriage arrangements are the households of the out-married sister’s of the groom’s agnatic group (Ratu B). They are known as the tupurmoko (little women) of Ratu B and are referred to as the leren ho moco (sisters and children), which includes their husbands. Tupurmoko households acknowledge the groom’s house (Ratu B) in this example as their own ‘source of life’ (ara ho pata), and the relationship therefore mirrors that created between the Bride’s family (Ratu A) and the Groom (Ratu B). In response to the gifts of livestock, labour, and cash that may be offered up by tupurmoko households to support the wedding exchanges, the groom’s house (standing as wife-giver in these relationships) must reciprocate in time with appropriate gifts of woven cloth and pigs. All households and extended agnatic groups are thus positioned in a chain of complex relations between their ‘wife-givers’ (ara ho pata), on the one hand, and their ‘wife-takers’ (tupurmoko), on the other. The result is a recursive pattern of exchange relations that expands in time and space and generates a virtual map of material flows and reciprocal exchanges within and between residential communities. The process of negotiating and fulfilling the exchange requirements of marriage is time-consuming as it unfolds over a series of formalized gatherings. It is also frequently onerous in terms of the resources and social capital that needs to be expended, especially in marriages between politically prominent families, where more is expected. While there is considerable variation between any specific marriage, and some families with modernist aspirations eschew the need to load up newly married couples with high levels of debt, customary marriage protocols involve a finely articulated presentation of gifts that needs to recognize all the roles and entitlements of different relatives of the marrying couple. Omissions or unfavourable commentary in relation to these distributions are likely to attract criticism and demands for apologies and fines. Marriage negotiations also tend to be couched in the metaphorical language of tradition. So, for example, new marriages between groups are described in terms of creating a new and narrow path between the households (ia miri, vaku miri). These and older ‘marriage paths’ that become overgrown through neglect or the absence of subsequent unions require specific ritual gatherings to ‘clear the path’ (ia sapirana) that unites them.15 Different stages in this process are marked by the allocation of gifts, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  754 Andrew McWilliam usually livestock and extended oration, and refer metaphorically to the stages whereby the groom, via a sequence of gifts, gains access to his bride and permission to depart with her family’s blessing. The nature and scale of these gifts are negotiated between the representatives of the marrying groups, but customary expressions of tradition are highly valued and regularly enacted. Fataluku marriage thus creates a multiplicity of exchange flows and, in the process, a long-term pattern of reciprocal gift-giving and support that extends throughout the life of the marriage and beyond, ordering the exchange relationships between affines and agnatic households. They culminate in mortuary exchanges that mark the death of a household member and the ritual requirements to manage the passage of the soul of the deceased. Death signals a change in the relationship between affinal houses, one that is necessarily marked by ritual exchange. At this time, affines meet each other again with gifts of woven cloth (lauhana) and oré from wife-givers, livestock and leura from wife-takers (tupurmoko). Present-day Catholic funerals typically involve the gifting of fine woven textiles, tagged with the names of the gift-givers for recording purposes, which are then given on to the affines of the bereaved who have toiled and contributed gifts of livestock and labour (the leren ho moco: sisters and children). Cloth and livestock thus move in continuing reciprocal pathways among familial alliance networks. All deaths are also marked by a specific ceremony prior to burial when matrilateral affinal relatives (senior representatives of the ara ho pata) receive obligatory payments of respect for the life they provided in marriage. These payments are known in ritual as hi kare moko (the small knife) and cai’in tefu ana (the flintstone [strike]). The saying refers obliquely to elements of the traditional personal toolkit that people would carry with them for use in everyday life. The actual gifts that this saying encodes are negotiated between the parties within conventionally agreed limits but usually include payments of horses, buffaloes, and/or cash equivalents. Death marks a rebalancing of the ledger that comprises the multiple transactions entered into in order to establish and sustain the marriage alliance (Forth ). This is in addition to any outstanding bridewealth payments (fai inu) that may have been promised but remain unfulfilled. Another expression used in this context is lafurana hi kare (lit.: hearth and knife), an allusion to the work of the younger sister, who has married into the affinal household and who comes to cook and prepare food at the house of her brothers.16 The lengthy and often theatrical negotiations over payment of outstanding debt obligations are usually fuelled by liberal quantities of palm liquor (tua haraki) and tobacco as others prepare baskets of steamed rice and boiled meat for feeding guests. The central point illustrated by these examples is that this complex assemblage of gifts, reciprocal exchange, and sequential feasting applies to just one marriage. If one imagines these events multiplied  or , times across Fataluku settlements, each engaging a similar, inevitably overlapping network of material relationships of exchange, an appreciation is gained of the density of mutually appropriated debts and obligations that flow in the context of Fataluku marriage events.17 Over time, every Fataluku household accumulates a store of these debts and claims that embed them within networks of sociality, and which are played out in the multiple arenas of social life. This is one of the reasons why Fataluku households have put sustained efforts into rebuilding livestock levels in the immediate years following the Indonesian withdrawal. Domesticated animals, especially pigs (pai) and buffalo (arapou), are key exchange Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 755 goods that are directed to ceremonial expenditure in order to meet insistent familial obligations. Commercial sales and direct consumption of accumulated stocks are therefore relatively rare, and in these circumstances Fataluku households reveal their livelihood strategies of investing in relationships of social value to renew and extend the community base (see Gudeman : ). Feeding the ancestors and the spiritual realm A second highly valued and complementary realm of cultural exchange is associated with what Mauss ( []) described as the fourth obligation, gifts to gods; or in this case, gifts directed to the religious domain and the realm of spirit. The shifting political climate in East Timor over recent years has been similarly reflected in a changing emphasis and orientation of Fataluku households towards religious practice. All Fataluku, like the overwhelming majority of East Timorese, are practising Catholics and express a strong commitment to the basic tenets of Catholic doctrine. Catholicism has had a long and chequered history in Timor since the early years of European colonialism and the arrival of Portuguese Dominicans in the late sixteenth century seeking Christian souls and a generous portion of the lucrative sandalwood trade. But while the influence of Catholicism on Timorese cultural ideas and practice has been strong, for centuries most of the population resisted conversion to the faith and it remained for the most part a religion of the small Portugueseeducated Timorese elite. As Carey has noted, it was less a deeply faith-based relationship than a mark of social distinction (: ), and, I would add, of political advantage. On the eve of the Indonesian military invasion in late , it is estimated, for example, that just  per cent of the population (,) were practising Catholics, the remainder adhering to the animist beliefs and practices of their forebears (Boyce : ; Carey ). This situation changed dramatically over the course of Indonesian occupation, and by the s the great majority of the East Timorese population were Catholics.18 There were two key factors that informed this conversion. Firstly, under the prevailing Indonesian state ideology known as pancasila, it was obligatory to belong to one of the five designated world religions. For Timorese, Catholicism was the obvious choice, and the public declaration of faith through religious practice (baptism, weddings, naming conventions, funerals, religious celebrations) brought with it benefits and advantages. Importantly, this included government-funded education and employment opportunities. More specifically, it avoided the very real risk of being targeted as a communist or sympathizer of the resistance struggle against Indonesian rule. Secondly, and more or less simultaneously, membership of the Catholic Church came to have nationalist connotations among many of the faithful, and was seen as perhaps the only local institution that provided protection and vocal support for the suffering of Timorese against perceived ‘Javanese Islam’ and the excesses of military repression. The change in religious orientation can also be seen as part of the strategic shift within the Timorese Fretilin resistance leadership from its earlier revolutionary Marxist roots to an altogether more populist and Catholic-based nationalist agenda (see Niner ).19 The enthusiastic embrace of Catholicism by Timorese society over the period of Indonesian occupation in East Timor might be seen as an expression of religiously Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  756 Andrew McWilliam inspired social security; a striking example of the comfort and protection offered by formal religion for widely different personal reasons in highly uncertain times. It is ironic, therefore, that in the post-occupation and now post-independence landscape of East Timor, the great gains for the Church that accrued over this period have begun to dissipate. This is also the case for Fataluku communities, which remain ostensibly Catholic in orientation, but much of whose daily practical involvement in religious activity is directed towards ancestral sacrifice and the relationship between the living community and the spiritual domain. They find no contradiction in this syncretic relationship as the perceived association is hierarchically ordered, with an omnipresent, albeit distant, Christian God encompassing and subsuming the more interactive domain of ancestral shades (calu ho papu) and other relational non-human inspirited elements. Fataluku refer to this sphere of spirit agency with the general term tei (pl.: teinu), meaning taboo or sacred; a concept that combines moral authority and protective familiarity with elements of dangerous uncertainty and retribution. Forms and practices considered tei or accorded the properties of tei are treated with considerable caution, respect, and ritual restraint.20 According to Fataluku, paternal ancestors of the house and clan, the calu ho papu, and the protective blessings they provide, are highly dependent on an ongoing engagement with their living descendants, who offer up invocations and sacrificial food. Neglect or disregard of ancestral signs and demands can result in spiritual sanctions expressed as personal illness or household misfortune. As Fataluku society is organized around deep agnatic ties to geographically dispersed origin groups, so the veneration of the origin male ancestors has highly significant cultural associations and provides the organizational focus for sacrificial rituals at specific sites of ancestral invocation and spirit communication. As a consequence, across Fataluku society, public engagement in prominent Christian Catholic rituals continues to be performed (weddings, baptism, funerals, patron saint processions, etc.), but there is a whole realm of symbolic gift-giving directed to the dead and the autochthonous spirits of the land (mua ocawa) that complements and articulates the conduct of social exchanges and engagement with networks of living kin and affines. Thus a key part of the enthusiastic increase in the exchange economy that I argue has characterized post-occupation Fataluku social life includes the ritual work of gift-giving in return for ancestral protection and blessing (Schefold ). All social gatherings and life-cycle celebrations have an explicit sacrificial component to the feasting that is designed to ‘feed’ (fané) the ancestors of the house (ratu) and integrate them into commensal congregation. At the slaughter of animals for provision to guests, for example, the inner organs and thorax (collectively epilu) are separated and marked for sacrificial preparation. The ‘sacred meat’ (leura tei: epilu tei) along with a special portion of cooked rice is then presented to the lineage ancestors at the ‘sacrificial hearth’ (lafuru tei or acakaka) of the hosting household accompanied with invocations for protection and health. The bulk of this cooked offal is then distributed in small plaited baskets (neru moko) or on bamboo skewers (leura susuka) and consumed by the male members of the wider agnatic group (kaka ho pali: brothers and fathers). Typically, too, a range of augury techniques are applied, examining the livers and pancreases of the sacrificed animals to determine the efficacy of the events in question and any additional ritual requirements that might be indicated to ensure that the ancestors are not displeased and that participants and members of the house are free of spiritual threat (McWilliam ). Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 757 Ideally, the installation of a sacred hearth (lafuru tei) accompanies the formation of a new household through marriage and the subsequent construction of a separate dwelling.21 Young unmarried sons and daughters continue to draw on the protective coverage of their father’s house and ritual hearth. The hearth itself is a box structure with an earthen base on which are placed three hearthstones (lilivana) and two small forked sticks known as saka which, when ritually invoked, provide protection for the women of the house (saka tupuru) and for the men (saka calu).22 Only sacrificial food is prepared at this hearth, and its use is directly associated with invocations to immediate house ancestors and, by inference, those of the wider kin group. House shrines represent the domestic expression of a wider network of spiritual and spatial connections that link the living members of the clan with their ancestral origins. The reproduction and confirmation of ancestral connections through multiple sacrifices and prayer invocations is at once a source of comfort to participants, a symbolic enactment of imagined clan solidarity, and the material and discursive record of ancestral settlement history and emplaced entitlement (see McWilliam ). Lautem itself is a deeply enculturated landscape and littered with the material signs and signatures of the ancestral presence. Beyond the focus on household shrines are numerous cemeteries of varying size containing often massive and elaborate graves of house ancestors and the recently deceased. Fataluku make substantial investments in fulfilling the stages of mortuary rituals all designed to honour the dead and ensure the passage of the soul/spirit (huma’ara) to the ancestral realm. As in other major life-cycle events, death is encompassed by a series of celebratory gatherings and feasting. The seven days and seven nights of mourning following death (mua kone fitu: mua haran fitu) culminate in burial, Catholic prayer, and the sprinkling of flower petals on the grave (cipi cipi ete kaure). The process is generally accompanied by the reciting of funerary chants and song dances (nololo, sau fa, sau ia mari) (McWilliam : ) which celebrate the life and deeds of the deceased and work to send his or her spirit on the journey to the ancestral realm; a place sometimes equated with the origin settlement of the clan (Lameiras-Campagnolo : ). Death is understood here as a form of transaction, a gift from the living to the ancestors in the hope of reciprocal blessing.23 Following burial, family members enter a year-long period of mourning, publicly identified by the wearing of black cloth (meta malaru). The process culminates in a final ceremony that releases the living from their burden and fulfils the gift obligations of the wife-taking houses (tupurmoko) to their wife-giving affines (ara ho pata). The subsequent completion of ancestor graves includes installing concrete headstones and funerary posts on which are placed a vertical series of buffalo horns (arapou cao inamai). These signal the completion of funeral obligations, and the animals slaughtered act as a mark of respect and esteem for the deceased. Decisions around the final mortuary rites are dependent on household accumulation of the necessary means to conduct the ceremony and are often guided by divinatory processes indicating the emergence of ill health or misfortune in the family and attributed to neglected obligations towards the dead. Beyond community graveyards the ancestral presence is tracked through material traces of previous settlements and clan-specific sites of mythic renown. Around the shoreline, for example, iconic altar-posts known as ia mari tuliya signal the ‘the footsteps of the ancestors’ and the landing sites of the seafaring origin ancestors of ratu Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  758 Andrew McWilliam agnatic communities. Limestone outcrops and other topographic features, such as the seafaring ‘stone’ boats (loiasu mataru) of the founding ancestors, record in fossilized form the actions of mythic settlement, while in the forested hinterlands massive stone fortifications (lata irinu, pa’amakolo) hold equally substantial origin graves (calu lutur tei) within their confines and other tei structures of ritual potency (ete uru ha’a). These highly charged ancestral traces, all symbolically hot (timiné) and dangerous, provide points of sacrificial reference and periodic veneration for members of the descent group. The collective enactment of ritual communion and redress at many of these sites has been an important part of the social rebuilding process for Fataluku communities, revealing a collective need to give thanks to the ancestors for their protective role during the years of struggle, to apologize for inadvertent neglect, and to seek continuing succour and protection for the well-being and health of their families (see McWilliam ; Taum ). Once again, decisions to perform ritual sacrifices at these sites often emerge over concerns with the health and well-being of lineage members interpreted as expressions of ancestral discontent or feelings of neglect. The lack of access to many of these sites of generative power during the Indonesian occupation meant that many obligatory rituals to feed (fané) the dead went unfulfilled and imperilled the protective blessings that ancestral attention provides. Post-occupation liberation, therefore, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to redress unfulfilled spiritual obligations, to renew the annual sacrificial invocations to ancestors and the spirits of the land (mua ocawa) for blessings and health of the ritual group, and to restore ritual sites that had been damaged or looted in the preceding years. Contemporary ceremonial gatherings vary in scale and purpose, but all require the mobilization of household resources, sacrificial animals, the ritual work of prayer leaders (luku-lukunocawa) and diviners (navarana), as well as the material support of extended kin and affinal networks within the exchange economy. Guided and framed by diagnostic techniques of divination (McWilliam ), in these multiple variations on a sacrificial theme, Fataluku households and communities work to remake their ritual relationships with the spiritual world by directing economic resources to symbolic ends (see Bourdieu  []). Fataluku futures In this article I have suggested that the intricate and multiple exchange relationships that enact social alliance among Fataluku communities represent forms of mutual appropriation; a set of reciprocal debts and claims upon multiple resources by multiple households that constitute the materiality of the gift economy and the basis for processes of social renewal. I argue further that these elaborated processes of exchange, which have always been present in Fataluku society to varying degree, intensified and expanded in response to the lifting of the Indonesian military occupation, under which the articulation of sociality was closely controlled and physically constrained. The possessory nature of appropriation in this case, however, tends to be temporally limited and redistributive in character. Gifts extended in one direction as obligatory gestures are reciprocated in contrasting measure. All gifts are debts, either as repayments or as expectations of return. In these recursive networks of production and consumption, circulation and exchange we can observe something of the mutuality of social life and the reproduction of what Gudeman has described as a community base, or Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 759 commons, where the post-occupation economy of Lautem has been resiliently ‘local and specific, constituted through social relationships and by contextually defined values’ (: ). The practices of a revitalized Fataluku exchange economy outlined here resonate with a significant body of literature focused on a related set of issues described in terms of the moral economy (Scott ), the house economy (Vel ), or ideas of community-based social security in agrarian societies (Benda Beckman & Benda Beckman ). But whereas much of this literature focuses on responses to what might be termed ‘ordinary adversity’, and the everyday need to secure domestic livelihoods, what distinguishes the Fataluku case study is the particular ‘post-conflict’ historical conditions of state dysfunction, social fragmentation, and the ‘extraordinary adversity’ that has prompted this intensification of gift exchanges. The multiple strategies directed to a continuing flow of mutually appropriated debt obligations can be viewed, therefore, as a highly successful cultural mechanism to rebuild the social commons and reassert Fataluku capacities for agency and a future-orientated, ‘being in the world’ commitment (Jackson ). All this is not to say that Fataluku have jettisoned their engagement with the modernity project and the aspirational politics for material well-being in which all are simultaneously embarked to varying degree. The realization of sovereign independence ‘against the odds’ carried with it strong expectations of prosperity and social justice for those who suffered and endured (Traube ). So a generalized desire for improved housing, health care, education, electricity, mobile telephony, and other trappings of progressive economic development remain important domestic agendas. But if these expectations have been sorely tested through a decade of hardship and grinding selfreliance, the gradual re-emergence of government services, salaried employment, formal markets, and a cash economy provides a range of alternative avenues for surplus redistribution. If the Fataluku cultural landscape can be said to remain an articulated site of disrupted modernity, to paraphrase Clifford (), it is well placed to re-engage its progressive embrace. One specific source of motivation to re-enter the market economy on a wider scale and to generate household cash income for other forms of economic investment (than purely social capital) comes from the aspirations of younger generations of Fataluku. In the aftermath of the independence struggle, many younger Fataluku have left the parochial confines of rural settlement life to pursue education and employment opportunities in the capital city of Dili, and, for some, in destinations beyond in Indonesia, Portugal, and elsewhere in Europe, where diasporic connections offer passports to altogether wider horizons. The impact of these shifting opportunities to participate in a much wider range of economic livelihoods and opportunities is also being felt in the Fataluku homelands. Requests for financial support through family networks, a small but growing remittance economy, and the general momentum of infrastructure redevelopment are leading to adjustments and debates over the scale and merits of the redistributive exchange economy. Social breakdown as a result of civil conflict and war is an all too common experience for disempowered communities around the world. The disruption and dislocation of multiple layers of interdependency that sustain communities of common practice are a sorry legacy of many war-torn contexts. The Fataluku experience summarized in this article offers a more optimistic perspective on ‘post-conflict’ processes of social recovery. This is not to say that there are no continuing issues of suffering, poverty, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  760 Andrew McWilliam domestic violence, or injustice for Fataluku communities. Processes of recovery from ‘social trauma’ are years in the making (Bubandt ). But what is evident from the enthusiastic participation in the exchange or community economy with its obsessive protocols around social recognition and mutual acknowledgement, giving and taking within an extended network of obligations, is that cultural resilience through transaction reinscribes an ancient heritage of social survival and renewal. Central to those efforts are the proliferation of intensified social exchanges and the public revival of ancestral religion in sacrificial mode. NOTES Versions of this article were presented at the joint ASA-AAS-ASAANZ conference held at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, - December , and the Australia-Netherlands Research Co-operation Workshop, ‘Human Security and Religious Certainty in Southeast Asia’, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, - January . I am indebted to the comments and suggestions from participants of these gatherings and to three anonymous reviewers who provided critical feedback and advice. 1 Barth defined transactions of exchange as ‘a sequence of interaction systematically governed by reciprocity’ (: ), which were generally strategically deployed. 2 The Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste became an independent sovereign nation on  May , the first new nation of the twenty-first century. 3 My use of the phrase ‘cultural resilience’ has its analytical roots in theories of group psychology and the relationship between collective trauma and strategies for rebuilding solidarity and social health. Like Lalonde (), I am aware of the theoretical difficulties inherent in the notion of cultural resilience – specifically the so-called ‘trait trap’ and problems of comparative definition. At the same time, it seems to me that if cultural resilience is to have any analytical force, the example I present of a renewed attention to complex exchange practices, founded in cultural conventions and coinciding with the end of a long period of social repression, would serve as a distinctive characteristic (see also Alexander ; Glantz & Johnson ). 4 Earl’s comments on the ‘great slave mart of the Bughis and Macassar traders’ (: ) located in Lautem highlights Fataluku capacities to negotiate mercantile capitalist relations as a complex historical component of wider networks of social exchange. Hoskins’s () remarks on slavery and agency in Sumba are strongly reminiscent of Fataluku contexts, where the social category of slave (akanu) persists as an inherited class of people. 5 Forças Armadas da Libertação Nacional de Timor-Leste. 6 This is not to suggest that the whole population was implacably opposed to Indonesian integration. The active resistance movement was probably always a minority, but the consequences of resistance were felt by everyone. 7 Frente Revolutionaria do Timor-Leste Independente. 8 One avenue for personal monetary gain that was sustained and may even have flourished in the post-occupation years has been cockfighting (aca isile) and its associated diversions of gambling and drinking. A predominantly male pursuit, the practice can generate substantial, albeit high-risk, cash income. 9 Fataluku follow Catholic conventions in the stages of grieving culminating in a twelfth-month ceremony where the black cloth of mourning worn by members of the family is cast off and burned. 10 The phrase refers to the second and third ascending generation of relative – grandfather and great-grandfather – and provides a generic reference to the collective ancestors of the lineage and clan. 11 Reversals of marriage direction between ratu lineages occur, but these require a genealogical sleight of hand that elides or bypasses the earlier pattern. Fataluku often say ‘reversals are not allowed ... unless you can find a path’, which involves a sometimes creative revision of earlier genealogical connections. 12 Woven textiles form a ranked group of prestige goods that every household needs to accumulate and exchange. Most married women spend a portion of their time fashioning textiles with back-strap looms in the shade of the house. High-status designs include siikalau, upu lakuwaru, sisirana lau, and raci kia. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 761 13 There are three categories of inherited social classes or castes in Fataluku society, referred to as Ratu (high-born), Paca (commoner/younger sibling), and Akanu (slave). Marriages between classes are disapproved of by higher-status groups and there are different levels of bridewealth expectations among the social levels. 14 This is consistent with the Fataluku preferred model where the bride’s father is also the groom’s mother’s brother (paienu). In other cases where young people do not marry matrilaterally, two ara ho pata groups are recognized. The principal group is the bride’s mother’s brothers, and a second grouping represented by the bride’s brothers (nami) and her father (palu), who will become ara ho pata to her children. Both groups are explicitly acknowledged in the bridewealth gifts. 15 The ritual process for clearing an existing path that has become ‘overgrown’ by the absence of repeat marriages is known as ia varisampai :: ia lure (to clean and sweep the path). It usually involves lower bridewealth because there is an existing alliance relationship between the groups. 16 Further formal exchanges occur when the deceased represents the last surviving member of a sibling group (noko vehula) from one mother. The gift, known as the mani me (to take the neck), refers to the neck of a slaughtered buffalo, which forms part of the ritual performance of appropriating the mani me by members of the ara ho pata (original wife-giving group). The occasion involves an extended negotiation over the ‘gift’ of animals and/or cash payments that members of the wife-taking tupurmoko group must acknowledge and provide. The final gifts signal the end of a generation of alliance between two intermarrying families. Burial of the deceased may not proceed until these negotiations are concluded, and they can grind on for a day or more. 17 Forman’s () paper on Makassae exchange ideology and practice offers a fine description of a similar cultural complex operating in the s among a neighbouring language community. 18 With the influx of Indonesia settlers and civil servants, Islam became a more prominent faith within the territory, but attracted comparatively few Timorese converts. 19 Catholicism gained initial traction as a mainstream religion in Lautem only following the establishment of the Don Bosco mission established by Salesian Brothers in Fuiloro (). 20 People often carry with them small bundles of charms (ete lari: pieces of tree root) that are designed to protect them from unwanted threats, spiritual attack from witches (acaru), or other malevolent influences. 21 To initiate the new hearth, hot embers from one’s father’s hearth (F or FB) are conveyed to the new site in a gesture that links newly installed sacrificial hearths (lafuru tei) to those of their forebears and origin ancestors. 22 A third saka is often placed above the doorway at the front of the house (o’o leo utanatana) protecting the occupants from unwanted spiritual incursions. 23 Traube’s forensic depiction of Mambai rituals of life and death strikes a similar note when she writes, ‘Gift exchanges transacted at death ceremonies are represented as prestations consecrated to the spirits of the dead in recompense for the ruined, wasted bodies they must leave behind’ (: ). 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Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute  Exchange and resilience in Timor-Leste 763 Échanges et résilience au Timor-Leste Résumé L’effondrement de l’économie de marché et de la plupart des possibilités d’emploi qui a accompagné le retrait de l’Indonésie du Timor-Oriental en  a suscité la réapparition de pratiques d’échange coutumières qui s’étaient fortement estompées sous la domination indonésienne (-). Dans de nombreux villages fataluku au Timor-Leste, le régime sévère de sûreté intérieure accompagnant l’occupation militaire empêchait les populations de réaliser des échanges vitaux, informant et reproduisant les relations sociales entre parents, affins et ancêtres. À présent que le pays est indépendant et que les Fataluku reconstruisent leur vie, l’attention se porte à nouveau vers les échanges et la circulation à double sens des dons, des marchandises, du travail et des bénédictions. Dans ce contexte, les notions d’obligation et d’échange mutuel deviennent des éléments constitutifs d’activités socioéconomiques et religieuses indispensables à la résilience de la communauté. L’auteur examine ici le rôle des économies du don en tant qu’expressions d’une sécurité humaine « au ras du sol » et comme stratégies pour atténuer l’incertitude économique par le biais des échanges rituels et des actes religieux. Andrew McWilliam is a Senior Fellow in Anthropology at the Australian National University. He has published widely on the ethnography of Timor and continues to pursue research interests in Timor-Leste and eastern Indonesia. He is co-editor (with Elizabeth G. Traube) of Land and life in Timor-Leste: ethnographic essays (ANU E-Press, ). The Australian National University, Anthropology, Coombs Building No. , Acton (Canberra), Australia, ACT . [email protected] Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) , - © Royal Anthropological Institute 